I paid £15 for massive carvery — I left with 1 main feeling

I’d heard about a carvery so popular it sells out every week. It sounds like families like nothing more than queuing up for a good carvery lunch, especially when you can’t be bothered with all the hard work that goes into preparing the Sunday roast.

It was at the Maesgwyn Hall, a large, rambling building previously owned by the local masonic lodge and situated within its own grounds and gardens next to the Wrexham’s now world-famous football ground.

The Maesgwyn Hall closed down during the pandemic and the lease was later taken over by the owners of the well-known Fat Boar pub chain. It is an impressive landmark building, which is centrally located and easily accessible with a large free on-site car park. It has become a popular watering hole for football fans on match day and there was a baby shower with pink balloons strewn everywhere in one of the function rooms on the day we visited..

The top bar and snug are both impressive rooms, flooded with natural daylight and decorated in a neutral colour. Both function rooms have their own bar with smart white tablecloths and red napkins.

We had booked our place via Messenger, which is essential if you want to guarantee a table at this often-sold-out event. We checked in at the bar and ordered two halves of Wrexham Lager, after establishing that they didn’t have any tea or coffee. We sat down for all of five seconds before getting straight back up again to head over to the small shuffling queue of hungry diners.

We eyed up the meats from afar, while inching closer to the carving chef. There was a pile of white plates on the first table with adult sizes for £15, under 12s for £9 or a huge mega plate for £19. It was soon to be meat decision time. We whispered to each other like two footballers taking a free kick just outside the penalty box: do we go for all four meats or just the one?

The person in front of us went for two meats, so we did the same. My wife went for beef and turkey, whilst I went double pig with pork and gammon. After having the meats slapped on our plates, it was time for the veg station. The trimmings section had a large choice with yorkies, roasties, mash, stuffing balls, carrots, honey glazed parsnips, red cabbage, cauliflower cheese, a selection of greens and a tray of pigs in blankets.

I put a bit of everything onto my plate and tried to look like I was being healthy by placing the greens over my pigs in blankets and the roast potatoes. However, I was fooling no one with my food piled higher than the massive floodlights across the road.

After loading up our plates, we hauled our goodies to a small condiments table. There was a large jug of pan gravy next to condiments such as horseradish, mustard, mint sauce and cranberry.

My wife reported that the beef was served fairly pink and that the turkey was succulent and certainly not dry. I really enjoyed the moist and tender slices of salty gammon and the pork, which were hidden underneath my avalanche of food.

The little bites of stuffing were perfectly crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and full of the classic stuffing flavour.

The red cabbage had a wonderful jam texture with a sweet and sour aftertaste. The honey parsnips were golden and soft on the outside with a delicate sweet tang. 

The mash was creamy, fluffy and buttery and the variety of green vegetables were moist rather than al dente.

It’s difficult to get everything right in a carvery and I found the Yorkshire puddings to be overly chewy and a little lifeless, whilst the roast potatoes were a little bit dry.

However, no such quibbles with the cauliflower cheese, which had lashings of bronzed cheese sauce spread on the top.

My eyes were certainly bigger than my stomach as I struggled to finish off the mountain of delights before me. We had turned up starving after skipping breakfast and were taken in by the tempting aromas of roasted meat. In my defence, I would argue that it is really difficult not to pile your plate up to the roof in such circumstances. The Maesgwyn must have quite a big laundry bill after the heady mix of gravy infested plates and white table cloths.

A waitress asked us if we wanted any dessert but we politely declined. Franky, I would be amazed if they sold any puddings after such a huge carvery but for £6 you could have a choice from chocolate fudge cake, apple crumble, vanilla cheesecake or a knickerbocker glory.

There was also a starter menu with items such as garlic mushrooms, prawn cocktails, pate, or bang- bang chicken for £6 as well, but you would be crazy to have a starter before the main event, if you had no portion control like myself.

There was a right mixture of people here from pensioners putting the world to rights to happy go lucky families with young children. Everybody was having a good time with some very attentive service from the hard-working members of the team.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with one less notch on my belt and a feeling guilty re all of the calories we had just consumed.

However, deep down, I knew that I would probably do exactly the same thing, the next time I turn up starving at a self-service Sunday carvery.

The bill

Carvery x 2 £15

Wrexham Lager half x 2 £2.40

Total £34.80